Friday, February 25, 2011

An earthquake awareness and preparedness program will be held on Saturday, February 26th from 10 AM to 2PM at the Bootheel Youth Museum in Malden.

The program is being held in honor of the bicentennial of the New Madrid earthquakes that occurred in 1811 & 1812.

The event will feature presentations from a geologist and a representative from the Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium, Brian Blake.

Blake will be presenting on the Great Central U.S. ShakeOut, a region-wide earthquake drill that will take place on April 28th.

"We want to teach people what to do when there's an earthquake and have them know how to react because when a big earthquake comes along you only have a few seconds to react and sometimes you don't have even that," Blake said.

This is the first year that the Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium will hold a ShakeOut drill. 800,000 people have already registered to participate.